Subverting and Redesigning Deities: Calamari Special (Part 3)

Ignoring how they're misused, an 'unknowable' deity can work wonders in your setting. A God who is truly a higher being, detached from concepts such as mortality, morality, linear time and three-dimensional space.

If you're going to use a cosmic horror themed deity, be willing to accept the consequences! Everything in your setting feels a little less important when it's contrasted to the uncaring whims of the infinite void, and "your characters are just flotsam in the tides of fate" isn't the sort of mood you want to set in a heroic adventure full of PC empowerment! Settings like Arnold Kemp's Centerra (sorry I'll try and stop leeching off them eventually) thrive in an endless fractal nightmare of billions of concentric, pointless conflicts. Settings that want to focus on individual heroics and triumphs will feel a tad undermined by that sort of thing. 

Also, in a touch of irony, a setting such as 2011's Dark Souls with a central theme of "player struggling to hold onto the last few embers of light left in a dying world" would actually be made less bleak by the introduction of gods beyond time and space, since that would mean that the end isn't inevitable everywhere, at least not yet.

PUTTING THESE ENTITIES IN YOUR SETTING IS NOT A THROWAWAY DECISION.

Some of the most interesting uses of 'eldritch-adjacent' themes (in my opinion) are seen below.

Doctor Manhattan

Doctor Manhattan in all his blue glory.

Image taken from DC Wikia

Minor spoilers for Alan Moore's Watchmen. As you can see, Doctor Manhattan's not crazy or tentacular or horrific. He's just blue and (mostly) naked. He's a comic book superhero. Jon gained powers after a freak lab accident, took up a cool codename, and fought evil. He's got a pretty basic suite of powers, like flight, the ability to make copies of himself, complete invulnerability, reality alteration, the ability to see all of time and space at once, and can rearrange individual molecules into anything he wants.

We have an entity that can see all of time and space at once, and change it according to their own whim. This entity can never die, be anywhere at any time, and can change any given piece of matter into essentially any other piece of matter. They could seize complete control over everything in the known universe and subjugate all sentient life, but just have better things to do. Oh yeah, and they used to be human, and their former relationships and perspectives are clashing horribly with their new existence.

I wouldn't recommend putting something like this in your game; they're just too powerful and too likely to derail the story to the detriment of everything else. They might make an interesting antagonist or 'force of nature' to contend with, however.

A Microbiologist

I'm going to cheat and just link directly to the article on Goblin Punch that introduced me to this idea. Thanks Arnold!

For those who don't want to check out one of the best OSR writers I've ever read, the summary is straightforward: What if the universe is just a petri-dish from some higher being? It acts upon us in macroscopic ways our microscopic selves simply can't perceive, to complete an experiment that only makes sense to macroscopic beings?

This is very much the 'classic' eldritch abombination. A creature that acts on a scale incomprehensible to humanity, and ignorant to the suffering they cause to us. A real-world analogy would be bulldozing a termite mound to build a cricket pitch- the termites have no concept of bulldozers, and would be completely incapable of understanding cricket. Oh yeah, and the destruction of the termite mound would simply be a side-effect of the cricket pitch's construction.

The Reapers

Harbinger, a recurring named Reaper.

Image taken from ME Wikia

Minor spoilers for the Mass Effect franchise. These guys aren't actually 'eldritch horrors.' They're big, their machinations span hundreds of thousands of years, they possess technology beyond understanding, they're physically imposing, etc. They're also very certainly not any sort of 'higher being.' Their technology is bizarre and advanced, but obeys the same physical laws as everything else. Their arrogance leads them to make fatal mistakes. Finally, we eventually learn their 'incomprehensible' morals... To breed. Just like every life form from bacteria, to mammals, to Turians and Asari.


These guys can end feeling like a cop-out to your players, if you've built them up as 'beyond comprehension' and reveal them to just be 'normal' and capable of being killed in a boss fight. Use with caution.

Bloodborne's Great Ones

A Caryll Rune, representing Formless Oedon.

Image taken from Bloodborne Fextralife Wiki

Minor spoilers for Bloodborne. 'Great Ones' exist outside of our world, but intersect with it in some ways. They are alien, even to experienced scholars. The Eldritch Calamari Special space gods of the Bloodborne setting are neither malevolent or dismissive of humanity- they're friendly. Many of the most twisted nightmarish places, scenarios and creatures in the setting aren't caused by malice, they're a direct result of people trying to understand and emulate these creatures.

This is a more personal horror than a traditional eldritch evil, seeing that the actual pain & suffering come from the actions of people and not the whims of a god.

So there's 4 things that I think make excellent use of the classic cosmic horror themed trope of 'unknowable entity from outside our reality that exists outside of our concepts of life, death, matter, space or time' in one way or another.

I've probably missed some great cosmic horror stuff, but I'll let it lie for now.

Subverting and Redesigning Deities: More Than Just A Name (Part 2)

Part 1.
Part 3.

So now I've staked out a few traditional archetypes, how can we actually subvert and redefine these bastards?


Immortal / Mortal extraplanar entities of great power.
The first change I'd make to how these suckers work is to give them interesting domains. A God of Fire is cool, a God of Thunder is cool, a God of Justice is cool. If you want to make new gods, give them new domains. In my own random scribblings, I created a pantheon of deities for a random mythic fantasy setting. Some of the gods included...

Llorue, God of Repose. Her domain included sleep aids, anesthesia, medicine, euthanasia and death. She opposed the undead, obviously, but her church kinda doubled as a Voluntary Humanoid Extinction Movement that sought a peaceful but very final rest for everything.

Velir, God of Servitude. Honoured by bodyguards, knights, samurai and servants. It's actually kind of rude to 'worship' Velir just due to his nature, but working in a hierarchy is considered paying respects. Velir actually used to be a god of Fellowship in the backstory, whose role was usurped by another being.

So yeah, those are my amateur attempts. Give them weird and contradictory domains. Have them uphold morals that don't align with 'normal' human beliefs and thoughts. Have, as Arnold Kemp suggested, 'foreign' angels and gods, like an Angel of Greed or an Angel of Pride, encouraging the virtues of Pride and Greed, and a Demon of Agriculture or a Demon of Peace that encourage the sins of pacifism and self-sufficiency.

If you want to use default D&D gods, go for it! Make them interesting by applying their domains constantly and always. Have Tyr bear nothing but scorn for pacifists and altruism! Asmodeus respects those who try to outwit him, and idolizes those who try! Gods of Fire may scorn burials and demand cremations, Gods of Air demand sky burials (NSFW), Gods of Nature demand their followers to lobotomize away their higher brain functions. These don't always need to be negative, I'm just a pessimistic son of a bitch.

Incredibly powerful mortals, mages or spirits.

This is almost an ideal level for your deities to be at for a sword & sorcery dungeon crawler. A 'serpent god' that draws power from the ritual sacrifices performed by their literal dozens of worshipers can be both a terrifying threat and something that can be killed by a handful of greed-obsessed scrubs with crowbars and 10' poles. The downside is that a population of gods that can be killed by the aforementioned scrubs raises a major question- namely, 'why haven't some other scrubs already dealt with these guys?'

These 'godlets' are best suited to a setting where the PCs are constantly roaming and exploring, discovering new parts of the world and new strange cults & religions. A large, established hub of civilization with temples & cathedrals built to a 'god' that has 30 hitpoints and does 8 damage is going to feel a little shallow when the party learns that Orthros the Mighty is worse in a fight than his pallbearers. 

Charlatans, grifters, con-men and men behind curtains.

See above, I guess. The main difference is that you can put these guys at the heart of an established religion even if they can't fight their way out of a paper bag, and explain it as them just being really good at lying and faking miracles. I wouldn't lean too hard on frauds myself, but I'm not running your campaign, am I?

Calamari-themed eldritch beings from beyond the stars that are dead but dreaming.

Oh, these bastards are getting their own post.

God, G-d, Allah, Jesus, Yeshua, The Light, The Lord, The Tetragrammaton.

Last but not least. I'd approach these Big Boys one of two ways. First, have them be a reclusive creator god that doesn't really interfere much. Have it be up in the air as to whether they even exist! Sure, their clerics or whatever have magic, but so do the setting's wizards and sorcerers. The other option is to do a straight mythic black & white fantasy setting, and set up Big G as a counterpart to an ancient evil (or several ancient evils). Honestly I think that 'Christian God But With A Dragon Head' is probably the least interesting way to put religion in your setting, but I'm biased.

Subverting and Redesigning Deities: Who Is This God Person, Anyway? (Part 1)

Part 2.
Part 3.

I was literally just given the name of this article with no further context and told to make an article on it. So I did.
Deities. I see them used in a lot of RPG settings in a few defined contexts, so here's a discussion.


Immortal extraplanar entities of great power.
Tyr, Pelor, Pan, Zeus, whatever. They have their own realms and afterlives and grant spells to clerics. Nothing wrong with that, I guess. You'll see tables of them in any Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook or Dungeon Master's Guide. I doubt I could write anything new there.


Mortal extraplanar entities of great power.
Often treated the same as the ones above, but more likely to have an actual 'challenge rating' or stats. There's still tables upon tables of info on them in countless published settings, but a 'mortal' deity sits closer to the player's level as something that can be spoken to, bargained with or even killed. In D&D 5e parlance, the above Gods would empower PCs using the Cleric class, whereas these lower-case gods would be closer to a Warlock PC's Patron. (Except the Great Old One class, but see below.)


Incredibly powerful mortals, mages or spirits.
These guys play by the 'rules' way more than anyone else. For a good pop-culture example, think of the forest gods & demons from the (excellent) film Princess Mononoke. Lord of the Rings technically isn't an example of this (see below), but it's entirely valid from a surface reading of the books (or from watching the films) to see characters like Gandalf, Saruman, Sauron and even Shelob simply as mortal beings of immense power and knowledge. Worthy of worship and adoration, capable of enforcing their will upon the world by means incomprehensible to many mortals.


Charlatans, grifters, con-men and men behind curtains.
This probably works just fine in a no-magic or low-magic setting, and can be a great mix-up for a high-fantasy or sword & sorcery campaign. The bolts of lightning are just a big taser! The booming voice is a megaphone! The terrifying winged beast is a taxidermied chimera only seen in silhouette! I'll probably do a bit on fake-out campaign themes & villains in the future so this'll be better covered there.


Calamari-themed eldritch beings from beyond the stars that are dead but dreaming.
Cthulhu! Zalgo! Hadar and Gibbeth and Acamar! The Eldrazi! Anything TVTropes would call an 'eldritch abomination!' I hate these. Hate, hate, hate. The concept is fine, but in Dagon's name is it easy to abuse these. Why give your entities cohesive motivations when you can just say they're 'eldritch' and leave it at that? Why create a unique visual appearance for your monster when you can just rip off a racist paranoid weirdo from the 1920s? That said, you can do them well. Guess I just found myself another article.


God, G-d, Allah, Jesus, Yeshua, The Light, The Lord, The Tetragrammaton.
There are 'gods' and then there's 'God.' This is the second one. They're omnipotent, or may as well be. They're outside context and do things that 'lesser' gods cannot. Most importantly, they're just a straight-up stand in for the Christian god in that they have no flaws, are perfect, do no wrong, and are an absolute moral arbiter of everything ever. You'll probably know them as Eru Ilúvatar from Tolkien's writings, or Aslan and the Emperor from Lewis. More recently, you've got the 'White God' in Butcher's Dresden Files novels, a being that seems ineffable from the point of view of not just people that regularly shake hands with Hades and Odin, but from Hades and Odin themselves.

So now we have an idea on what we regularly see, how can we mess around with it to create new stories? Find out in Part 2.